Scrolling down the internet last night (thank you, Verizon technician!) and wondering if it would be possible to avoid the latest outrage from Washington I was startled to see one that D.C. hasn’t matched, at least not yet. The Lt. Governor of Illinois and Christian Nationalist pastor Micah Beckworth wants to go back to the good old days when state constitutions required that you be a Christian to seek public office.
Beckwith, like many other fundamentalists has his facts all wrong. Nine of the original 13 colonies did have some form of religious test, usually a declaration of a belief in God or adherence to the “protestant religion.” However, Article VI of the U.S. Constitution after declaring it to be the supreme law of the land states: “No religious Test shall be ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or pubic Trust under the United States.”
One by one, the new states eliminated religious tests and ended state support for their churches, Massachusetts being the last in 1833. Religious intolerance did not end then, of course, and became inflamed with Irish immigration. Even in 1960, John F. Kennedy, a Catholic, faced questions of where his loyalties would lie. Intolerance and prejudices still exist and are like cancers that blot our tradition and guarantees of religious freedom.
Prayer for the Day
Lift the scales of blindness from our eyes, O God,
And the limits of intolerance from our hearts;
Help us be faithful servants responding to your word,
For we are ordinary people sometimes afraid to take risks.
Break down the chains of caution that bind us,
And move us boldly into a future we cannot fully envision.
In the name of the One who points the way,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen
Thoughts for the Day
…ecclesiastical establishments tend to great ignorance and corruption; all of which facilitates the execution of mischievous projects [that end in failure.
James Madison, signer of the Declaration of Independence
Believing with you that religion is a matter which lies solely between Man & his God, that he owes account to none other for his faith or his worship, that the legitimate powers of government reach actions only, & not opinions, I contemplate with sovereign reverence that act of the whole American people which declared that their legislature should "make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof," thus building a wall of separation between Church & State.
Thomas Jefferson, letter to the Danbury, Connecticut, Baptist Association.
Wisdom reaches from one end of the earth to another and orders all things well.
Wisdom 8: 1